


All My Work, All My Life

by navree



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, PARENTDALEAW2K19, day one - favorite character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 23:55:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17755949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navree/pseuds/navree
Summary: Hiram won't apologize for the things he did to avoid destiny and its often cyclical nature.Hiram has time to think in prison.





	All My Work, All My Life

**Author's Note:**

> listen to inutil from lin manuel miranda's in the heights and realize why none of y'all deserve hiram lodge. also this is all projection because at least half of this is autobiographical  
> as always, comments (either positive or constructive) are always welcome and much appreciated!

Prison feels quiet. It feels lonely. It feels reflective. 

Hiram doesn't particularly like being reflective. He never tries to reflect on what he's done, how he's gotten to where he is, the path his life has taken **_(_** the path he carved out for himself, made different **_)_**. 

It's a very interesting phenomenon, to grow up poor and yet reach your maturity rich. It means you know what it's like to have nothing, to gain something. It means you never want to lose that something ever again. For Hiram, it means doing whatever it takes to make sure he never lost that something ever again.

Hiram doesn't like to think of childhood. They weren't Southside poor, thank God. But close. Close enough to associate with the Southside, and what did that do for him? What did that give him other than a less than lucrative business arrangement and a best friend currently living 8 hours away by car **_(_** he knows, he checked **_)_**. What's the point of thinking of that time, when it was all scrimping and saving and tight smiles from him whenever people asked what his parents did and he responded with, 

"Oh, you know. Odd jobs here and there. Riverdale can't run itself," he'd add as a joke, as if his father working whatever he could grab and his mother struggling through a private law practice no one gave a shit about essential to the town's upkeep. 

Most people believed him and didn't bother trying to see through it. The ones who knew better respected his desperate pride. 

Things turned around early in high school. His parents both had law degrees, both passed the bar, both have licenses, though only his mother had ever made use of them. But one of his father's old friends from his childhood in Mexico, before they all decided to go stateside **_(_** and Hiram has never asked how exactly that happened, he doesn't want to know **_)_** got into a spot of trouble and could Hiram's father perhaps reactivate his license and help him out. 

It ended up being a lucrative endeavor. They got money and they got exposure and soon enough both of his parents were working at his mother's once struggling firm, which was now his father's not at all struggling his firm, juggling many clients with many deep pockets. 

Yet there was always the fear that it could all be gone one day, that God or whoever was in charge of these things could just as easily take away what had been given. So when the scum of the Southside needed someone to run their filth outside of their circle, to the anxious high schoolers and depressed wives and overworked husbands, Hiram said yes. He never kept the money for himself anyway, and pretended that his parents didn't know what he was doing. 

And despite jokes from her friends that they would end up high school sweethearts, Gladys was still two years younger than him and not on his radar that way when he met Hermione Gomez while taking a night off to catch a movie at the Bijou with Hal. He knew her from school, knew that she had a tendency to cut deep with those manicured nails and that Hal's crush Alice Smith **_(_** and Hiram won't judge but really, out of everyone golden boy Hal, _perfect_ Hal, could want he's chosen a Serpent whore? **_)_** finds her insufferable. Which means that Hiram immediately likes her. Likes her enough that the next time he goes to the Bijou it's without Hal and ask her, 

"Would you want to get dinner sometimes?" He thinks he was smooth. Later, after they get engaged, Hermione tells him that he was red even under the lights and stammered and punctuated every other word with 'uhhhh'.

Well, she must have liked that. She said yes and soon there were quick make out sessions wherever they could grab them and dates where they held hands and he kissed her cheek. And while she definitely wasn't his first time, he'd had his share of dalliances with men and women alike by the time he beat out her flirtation with Fred and they were going steady, Hermione was the time that mattered. He doesn't mind her occasional bouts of mean girl cruelty and she doesn't mind his flirtations with the wrong side of the law. They make it work.

When he threw a graduation party at the newer, nicer house the Lodges were living in, he alternated between getting drunk with Hal and Tom Keller, reminiscing with Gladys, and asking Hermione to come to New York with him. She said yes and honestly, that might have been why he decided never to look back at this godforsaken town again. 

He's gone back to Riverdale twice after he left, senior year. There was his ten year reunion, where everyone cooed over the pictures of Veronica that Hermione proudly passed around and he hung back with Gladys, ribbing her about going back on the childhood promise to make him her best man at her wedding **_(_** her and FP Jones, he never could have seen that coming or maybe he could have if he'd been paying attention **_)_**. The other time was fall semester, sophomore year of college, when his mother called and told him, quite plainly, 

"Your father passed away." 

Hiram thinks he handled the news well. He didn't cry, didn't yell, didn't break anything. He came home, kissed his mother and stood dutifully through all the necessary funerary arrangements. He listened to the will being read, collected the various things that had been left to him. Then he went back to New York, sold everything that would have made money **_(_** his newly established trust fund was a toddler, he couldn't afford to assume it would last forever **_)_**. The other stuff, the mementos, the personal, he calmly doused in lighter fluid and set on fire. 

Later, he screamed into his pillow until his throat was raw and his voice was hoarse for days and decided that it counted as grieving. 

It wasn't that he had a horrible relationship with his parents, that he hated them, he told Hermione later, much later, because he needed someone to know and not judge. It just evaporated the moment he no longer needed them. His father was never really present, constantly working and emotionally distant, and the only real conversation they had was when his father sat Hiram down and explained their family history. Poor farmers and workers in Mexico, poor workers in America, and the likelihood that Hiram would continue the trend. When he piped up and said that he'd leave that behind and make something more, his father's only response was to slap him so hard that his ears rang. 

It was the only time his father had ever laid a hand on him, and they never talked about it again for the rest of his life.

His mother was the exact opposite. Constantly present, almost obnoxiously so, being the disciplinarian, the one cooking his meals and helping him with homework, and smacking him when need be **_(_** and by sheer definition, whenever she did it was when it need be **_)_**. They didn't really talk after he went off to college, didn't even talk that much after his father's death. He still looks after he, makes sure she's comfortable. She's in the best nursing home money can buy, and they write each other letters sometimes. 

He won't write her from here though. It would be too humiliating. 

Some might say he brought it down on his own head, that his greed and desire to keep clutching the wealth he'd grown used to in high school had led him to this. Maybe so, but he's fine with it. He's fine with the fact that he took his family's sheer good luck, worked hard, and grew his money into an empire. Had he always done it ethically? No, not at all, but it was necessary, the mobsters and gang leaders and money lenders and the other shady business dealers who helped him earn more and more. Become more and more powerful.

Money is money and people who don't understand the need to hold onto it have never had to live a life without. Hiram won't apologize for the things he did to avoid destiny and its often cyclical nature. He would do it all again. 

And if he ever has to justify the things he's done, there's always an easy answer: his daughter. Veronica has never known hardship, never known the worry of whether or not the money would come in time, has always had things handed to her. And he doesn't begrudge that. His daughter deserves everything, _she is everything_ , and it will be his greatest shame that she saw this happen to him. He wanted to be a better parent than his were, give her more than just financial comfort and stability. Give her love and let her know there was love.

His parents loved him, he thinks. No, he knows his parents loved him, they're his parents. Parents have to love their children. He loves his daughter. 

He loves his family and he did all of this, all the criminality and deception and ethical violations and moral depravity, for them, and now he's sitting useless in a cell at Yonkers while they're back in the pit of Hell that is Riverdale. 

He _hates_ Riverdale. He knew to get out of Riverdale, so did Hermione and Gladys and Myles. Only idiots stayed, like Fred Andrews and FP Jones and even Hal, his old friend Hal who should have known better, who could have easily run a newspaper somewhere else, Hiram could have gotten him a job at the fucking New York Times if he wanted **_(_** he'd be a better editor than Jill Abramson or Dean Baquet **_)_**. Maybe Hiram's in this position because his heart is too soft on fools. He gave _The Register_ a few quotes on occasion, broke a deal with the Serpents because Gladys asked, showered his wife and daughter with whatever they wanted no matter the consequences. 

His parents weren't soft. He wasn't, back when he was younger and selling Fizzle Rocks and Jingle Jangle and whatever else was needed. He needs to not be soft, he needs to not waste his one phone call on his family and end every one of them with a soft, 

"I love you." 

Maybe prison will harden him. But prison is only temporary, and he'll be out, because he wants to get out and if his life has taught him anything, it's at the end of the day Hiram Lodge always gets what he wants.


End file.
